Forget ya driverless Ubers, Pittsburgh, ‘cos Helsinki are currently repping two legit electric-powered self-driving buses right now and they’re fricken adorable!
LOOK AT ‘EM. LOOK.
A pair of Easymile EZ-10 buses will be carrying a maximum of 12 passengers along a fixed route in the Hernesaari neighbourhood of Helsinki for the next 4 weeks. While similar tests have happened before, this is the first one in the world to cary actual passengers on public roads.
As Finland is one of the only countries that does not legally require every vehicle on public roads to hold a driver, it puts them in a unique position to test such groundbreaking technology, as well as certify them as utterly batshit crazy. Apparently when the law was written in the 70’s, there was no mention of the driver actually holding a steering wheel, allowing them to operate remotely or at the very least, monitor a driverless fleet.
The Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences is conducting the test to see how the driverless buggers go in actual traffic. To minimise risk, the vehicles are capped at a max speed of 10km/h, at least for their first few adventures into the wild. Remote supervisors say that have only had to intervene a handful of times and take control of the vehicle. We can only assume the situation looked exactly like this:
Hail to the bus driver. The bus driver bot.
Source: Curbed.
Photo: Easymile.com.
